Youtube lagging with old PC and XP
 

My father-in-law has a E5500 (o/c to 3.5ghz), 3gb ram, Radeon 4350, 1366x768 LCD, win XP, and 160gb HD. It has difficulty to run 2 youtube side by side.

Not sure if it is the video card or OS, he asks if it can be upgraded to win8.1 instead of upgrading with newer parts.

Try to clear browser cache and run disk cleanup

I'm running an E4300 w/ 3gb ram and a Radeon 4300 on Win 7. No issues running youtube vids side by side so try upgrading the OS.

Right click on the video, goto settings and allow hardware acceleration.
Update video card drivers.

if all else fails. Lower the video quality.

Probably video card.

I have an old desktop slower than that (I believe its an Athlon II) running Windows 8.1 that I upgraded with a cheapo ATI Radeon 5450 for video hardware accelleration and it runs HD Netflix/Hulu/Youtube fine.

However, I noticed the latest few updates of Chrome, one of their Flash plugins was crappy and it would slow down videos noticeably. It did not happen with other browsers (including IE). (for reference: http://www.techhive.com/article/2025...le-chrome.html)

If this is a recent occurrence and your dad uses Chrome I may check that out first.

Also FWIW, Windows 8 runs and boots much faster even on this slow ass desktop and is still quite usable for basic browsing/videos.

what anti virus you are using? Sometimes its the antivirus as well.

It happens to my dad computer

It is running IE8 and I realize Chrome is causing youtube to lag even more, so I didn't use it. Let me give it a try on the OS, then try to overclock the video card lol

Antivir, I guess once it is upgraded to win8.1, then it will be using MS defender

I remembered once switching youtube to html5 and it started to lag on me on older computers. Not sure if this is a thing or what youtube defaults to anymore but it might be worth it to take a look.

Removed the antivirus and spyware and fresh install firefox and start from there.

How long ago was it formatted and how much other junk does he have running in the background? Also this may be unrelated but make sure his wallpaper isn't some stupidly huge image, I made that mistake once on my older machine and it wasn't happy.

Added a 22" 1080p monitor, installed win8.1, overclocked the HD4350.

IT IS SMOOOOOOTH, 3 youtube at once, not a problem...I don't feel like giving my spare SSD to father-in-law lol otherwise it will be a quick machine. :hotbaby: